WASHINGTON – A trade group that includes Google Inc., Microsoft Corp. and other high-tech companies asked federal regulators to order changes in copyright warnings.

Copyright statements that appear at the start of most DVDs and pro sports events and movies broadcast on TV go too far and discourage legal use of the content, the Computer and Communications Industry Association said in a statement.

The complaint filed with the Federal Trade Commission protests statements used by Major League Baseball, the National Football League and NBC Universal and Dreamworks Animation Inc., among others.

The complaint asks the FTC to order the companies to stop using current copyright language and launch a marketing campaign to inform consumers of their rights under fair use laws.

Unresolved copyright issues are more important than ever to digital media companies because they could hinder the growth of online video-sharing Web sites like YouTube.com, which Google purchased last year for more than $1.6 billion.

Calls to companies named in the complaint were not immediately returned.

“The bottom line is that the copyright holder is not the final arbiter of how his work can be used,” said the group’s spokesman Will Rodger. “Copyrights are granted by the federal government and it’s ‘we the people’ who decide where to draw that line between what’s legal and what is not.”